Disposable absorbent articles, such as diapers, pull-on diapers, training pants, adult incontinence pads, wipes, facial tissue, toilet tissue, napkins, paper towels and the like are often manufactured and/or packaged on a high-speed production line (e.g., greater than 400 articles per minute) where individual articles may move along a production path at a speed of hundreds of meters per minute. It is not uncommon for such high-speed manufacturing processes to utilize conveyors and/or rolls to transfer articles from one process or process component to another. It is also not uncommon for the various transfer conveyors or rolls to operate at different speeds depending on the particular process involved. In order to minimize the potential risk of articles overwhelming the process equipment capability (e.g., causing undesirable errors associated with article detection equipment/sensors such automated vision systems/cameras, portions of the articles overlapping one another, and/or not providing sufficient time for certain components to properly reposition/reset for processing a subsequent article in a series of articles), the articles are typically spaced apart from one another at least in the machine direction.
Disposable absorbent articles such as children's diapers, training pants, and the like are typically sold in a variety of sizes based on, e.g., the weight and/or age of the child who wears the article, and the size difference in such articles typically translates to a difference in the overall length of the articles (i.e., larger sized articles are typically longer than smaller sized articles). In certain processes such as conventional diaper or pant making processes, when the manufacturer chooses to make a different size of article, certain components of the manufacturing process may not provide a suitable amount of spacing between articles when the length of the article is changed (e.g., the transfer conveyor and/or drum). In order to address problem of making different sized article sizes, at least some manufacturers keep different sized conveyors/rolls on hand. Thus, when the article size is changed, the conveyor or roll is replaced with one that is tailored to accommodate the desired article size. Not surprisingly, stopping the manufacturing line to replace a conveyor/roll may result in an undesirable loss of production time.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a process and apparatus for transferring articles of different sizes from one carrier to another without having to replace a carrier.